Pubdate: Fri, 10 Aug 2001
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2001, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jeffrey Simpson

IN SEARCH OF A FIX FOR URBAN DRUG MISERY

VANCOUVER -- Philip Owen, Vancouver's mayor, puts the matter squarely. 
Despite endless discussion, earnest work and government programs, "little 
progress has been made to reduce the negative impact of substance misuse on 
our neighbourhoods and our citizens."

Vancouver is not alone with an urban drug problem, but this city's is 
especially acute, in part because it is a major entry point for drugs from 
Asia and because users and pushers are so concentrated in one area, the 
Downtown Eastside. Since 1993, Vancouver has averaged 147 
illicit-drug-overdose deaths a year.

Mr. Owen has been energetically trying to draw attention to the need for a 
municipal/provincial/federal attack on the drug problem. He's right to do 
so, because no one level of government alone can alleviate the problem in 
neighbourhoods such as the Downtown Eastside.

Last spring, after extensive public consultation, the city's drug policy 
co-ordination unit issued a four-part Framework for Action strategy. It 
makes sensible recommendations for prevention, treatment, enforcement and 
harm reduction, based on the principles that "addiction needs treatment and 
criminal behaviour needs enforcement."

These principles are easier said than implemented.

A city such as Vancouver can only do so much for a complex problem with 
international and national links. Ottawa is responsible for immigration and 
refugees, border control and the criminal law, and in none of these areas 
is it being as helpful as it should.

Canada's refugee-determination processes are slow and deportation efforts 
notoriously inefficient. Plenty of pushers, runners and drug kingpins are 
in the Vietnamese, Chinese and Honduran communities and, although it is 
categorically wrong to stigmatize these communities as drug havens, neither 
the immigration nor refugee-determination procedures help weed out bad apples.

Worse still have been the effects of court rulings under the Charter of 
Rights and Freedoms (especially the security-of-the-person section), and 
the federal Justice Department's fear of swelling the jail population.

Mr. Owen eagerly hands a visitor a pile of newspaper articles reporting 
judicial rulings so light against pushers and dealers as to defy belief. 
(Charges against Dial-a-Dope pushers were thrown out under the Charter 
because police broke down the door of their apartment instead of checking 
to see whether it was unlocked.) Apparently not much has changed in the 
lower courts since RCMP undercover officers with whom I travelled four 
years ago almost threw up their hands in despair at remanded court dates, 
light sentences and disappeared accused.

Ottawa, in fairness, participated in the Vancouver Agreement of March, 
2000, and funded some early projects in the Downtown Eastside. But much 
more is needed, especially for treatment and harm prevention. It's too 
early to tell whether the B.C. government will step up its efforts, 
although Premier Gordon Campbell knows all about the problems, since he 
served as Vancouver's mayor for seven years.

Toronto has been experimenting since 1998 with a special drug treatment 
court in which users who plead guilty are placed in treatment programs. 
Vancouver might copy this model.

Needle-exchange programs need expansion, since dirty needles are a prime 
means of transmitting HIV and hepatitis C. Switzerland, the Netherlands, 
Germany and Britain are trying various heroin-assisted therapy programs for 
addicts. Methadone as a replacement for heroin has been tried with some 
success in B.C. and elsewhere and might be expanded.

Many anti-drug campaigners insist that programs of abstinence for 
recovering users is the best strategy, but the Vancouver report suggests it 
may not always be the best approach. So-called low-threshold support 
programs, whereby small doses of drugs are consumed in safe, supervised 
injection rooms, may help people wean themselves better than straight 
abstinence.

The Vancouver report stays far away from the contentious issue of 
legalizing drugs, as advocated by New Mexico's governor and such 
publications as The Economist. A case can be made for legalization, but the 
public antipathy to the idea is such that no Canadian politician will touch it.

Plenty of fine people and worthy community organizations have been 
struggling to improve things in the Downtown Eastside, arguably the most 
concentrated pocket of drug-related misery in Canada. Their efforts border 
on the heroic.

They often work against formidable odds: the power of drug syndicates, 
lenient courts, the Charter, the tragedy of mental illness, desperate 
poverty, deep addictions, lack of proper shelter for those in distress, 
insufficient funds. Mr. Owen has made further progress a bit of a personal 
crusade, and both senior levels of government have provided additional funds.

But more money is needed, plus tougher enforcement against pushers and a 
wider range of treatment options for users, if more progress is to be made.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens